Centre for Internet and Society

The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change

radha — 2011-10-21T09:59:51Z

CIS in collaboration with the LINK Centre, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and in association with different institutions across India is organizing a Lecture Tour on:
“The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change” By Sagie Chetty, Senior Manager, Eskom, South Africa.
It will be our pleasure to have you join us for the talks.

The Co-hosts, Dates and the Venues for the Talk are given below –

Co-Host: Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Date: 19th October, 2009 at 3.30pm
Venue – IIT-M, Chennai

Co-Host: Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Date: 20th October, 2009 at 4.00pm
Venue – IIT-B, Mumbai

Co-Host: International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore
Date: 23rd October, 2009 at 4.00pm
Venue – IIIT-B, Bangalore

Co-Host: Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi
Date: 26th October, 2009 at 3.00pm
Venue – IGNOU, Delhi

Co-Host: National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies, Delhi
Date: 27th October, 2009 at 3.00pm
Venue – NISTADS, Delhi

Co-Host: CCMG - Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Date: 29th October, 2009 at 2.00pm
Venue – CCMG - Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

About the Speaker:

Sagie Chetty is a Senior Manager in Eskom, South Africa’s largest electricity utility. Sagie spent the first part of his career at Eskom as Information Manager in the Generation Division. In that time he was responsible for information systems strategy development and implementation. Some of the key projects he has been involved in are the implementation of SAP Plant Maintenance, Business Intelligence systems and other bespoke Information Systems for Generation Power Stations.

Abstract of the Lecture: The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change

With a gross domestic product of over $506 billion (PPP, 2008) South Africa is one of the leading economies on the African continent. Only Nigeria with a GDP of $328 billion and Egypt with a GDP of $453 billion currently rival the South African economy. The economy is strong in manufacturing and agriculture, but is still based significantly on mining of gold, diamonds, platinum, coal and iron ore. Its main trading partner is the European Union. Bilateral trade with India amounts to $6, 2 billion (2008) with the balance of trade in South Africa’s favour to the value of about $1 billion.
Although one of the leading economies in Africa, South Africa’s Information and Communications (ICT) sector has not shown the concomitant level of development that reflects its economic position in Africa. ICT usage – telephony and Internet – has historically been low, and electronic transactions are utilised largely by business. There are a number of reasons for this; however the high cost of telecommunications is certainly a contributing factor. The high cost is attributed largely to policy and regulatory failure in the telecommunications sector. The sector is characterized by powerful incumbent telecoms operators that thwart competition and further entrench their dominant market positions. The consequence is that the high telecommunications costs impact access, affordability and the cost of doing business for the region.
Recent developments in the telecommunications sector, however could spell the end to high costs if policy and regulatory actions do not hinder competition. South African consumers can in the very near future look forward to lower telecommunications prices with the laying of new undersea cables, a new national backbone to compete with the existing one, new satellite ventures to provide the backhaul between cellular and broadband towers, a landmark court decision allowing value added network service providers (VANS) to build their own networks and the imminent entry of the incumbent telecommunications fixed line operator into the mobile arena. It is an opportune time for policy makers and regulators to take bold steps to free up the sector and open it up for true competition.
Lines that historically demarcated fixed, mobile, voice, data are blurring, causing shifts in market structures. However, currently the market is structured around the incumbent Telkom for fixed lines services and Vodacom and MTN for mobile services. A second PSTN, Neotel has been licensed but is only offering limited services. A third mobile operator, Cell C is operating but has yet to gain any significant market share.

The talk is open to all and there are no registration or entry fees.
Please let us know if you require any further details.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/lecture-tour-by-sagie-chetty

The Role of ICT in Judicial Reform- An Exploration

rebecca — 2011-08-02T07:17:22Z

A seminar held this month by the Communications and Manufacturing Association of India (CMAI) explored the role that information and communication technology can assume in the process of India's judicial reform efforts. The broad consensus among panelists was that “law is not keeping pace with technology”. However, whether technology will be harnessed to actually facilitate much needed transparency and access to the justice system, or be simply used to improve efficiency within the judicial branch still remains unclear.

The Indian judiciary is facing mounting pressures to reform its apparatus. Even the judiciary itself has come to recognize, on the books, that change is long overdue. Some estimates have it that it would require almost three years to clear the current backlog of cases in High Courts. While technocrats herald that the enormous backlog of cases may eventually be the death knell for India's judicial branch, reform efforts must go beyond achieving the speedier delivery of justice and work towards tackling other inadequacies of the system if “access to justice for all”(1) is to become a reality.

The rural penetration of courts in India is extremely low, which significantly limits access to justice for the many citizens living far beyond the district courts of city centers. An extremely low judge to population ratio in India only contributes further to the already high incidence of pending cases, making delays in justice a regular occurrence. Mr. P.K. Malhotra from the Department of Legal Affairs has noted that increased litigation within the government has also caused a stark increase in the number of pending cases. While the need for reform can be demonstrated quite clearly on a practical level, the right to information (RTI) movement has also provided further impetus for reform on a more fundamental level. Well organized citizens are now demanding the right to a more transparent and accountable judiciary.

As e-government initiatives continue to transform the nature of India's bureaucracy and enhance the quality of government services, there is a mood of great optimism that ICT will also come to play a central role in judicial reform efforts. Speakers at the seminar enthusiastically cited innovative practices such as Singapore's “paperless court” which makes a compelling case for automation. Notable success in implementing ICT in the judiciary have also been achieved in Canada, Australia, and in several countries across Latin America. This is not to say, however, that the appropriation of ICT is uniform in every case. Variables such as political will and context, institutional capacity and reform goals all play a role in shaping the outcome. Plans could, for example, take more of an operational approach by prioritizing the improved efficiency and the rationalization of resources by implementing electronic case management systems. Other strategies may be designed and implemented from an access perspective, seeking to restore faith in the justice system by increasing transparency and accountability. This could be done, for example, by installing video technology in court rooms, or publishing legal information online.

At the seminar, India's consortium of well-organized and highly ambitious technocrats were not shy in suggesting the many ways ICT may be used to transform the judicial system, and, additionally, the many ways such an endeavor provides the IT sector with “new opportunities”. Dr M. Veerappa Moily, Union Minister for Law and Justice, has proposed for India a centrally funded and administered National Judicial Technology Program. Such a program aims to use ICT in the courtrooms to free the legal system of “historical inefficiencies". It is of no doubt that ICT can reduce the duplicity of the paper world and make courts more green through electronic case filing and video conferencing. Online case filing systems can increase speed in which citizens can have their cases heard, and real time access to online repositories of legal information drastically expedites the case cycle.

Mr. C P Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra made the bold assertion that with ICT, India's 300 year case backlog can be reduced to three years, in a span of only three years (2). Features of this newly envisioned e-justice system include the use of video hearings to reduce transportation costs, case filing operation systems, RFID based file tracking, and the creation of a publicly accessible and easily searchable e-library. While others were much less optimistic than Mr. Gurani and recognize that the use of ICT in the reform process is “no instant coffee”, the question of whether or not ICT can be a strategically appropriated in the Indian context still remains.

Optimistic accounts of how ICT will increase access to justice, incorporate the marginalized into the law-making process, and increase judicial transparency and accountability all sounds uncomfortably techno-utopian. While ICT should facilitate the reform process, past experiences have shown that the over zealous use of technology has too-often resulted in less than impressive results (3). To ensure that the reform process in India is not driven mainly by the IT sector, it is important that the use of technology remains complimentary to a sound national judicial reform strategy. An abundant supply of technical support with little demand for the reform process from within the judicial branch may spell disappointing results for all stakeholders. Seeing that India's first seminar discussing the role of IT in the judiciary has been organized by the IT industry, it is safe to assume that reform strategies are being crystallized through the gaze of technocrats rather than the judiciary itself. Technology has an important role to play, but India's technocrats may be jumping the gun.

Many deep-seated challenges must be overcome before the use of ICT can be truly transformative. Often cited is the level of resistance judicial cultures express towards externally imposed change. Quite logically, those required to make change are also those who may have the most to lose in the short-term by doing so. Similarly, it is also difficult garnering the levels of political support judicial reforms require to be effective. Because the judiciary is such a highly politicized apparatus, efforts to fundamentally transform the system will require the support of a vast number of stakeholders . The low level of technological literacy which exists among India's judges is also problematic. Not only will members of the judiciary be open to new ways of doing business, they will also have to be diligent in adopting a new skill-set in which they may be more than a decade behind in acquiring.

Other deep-rooted limitations of India's judicial system are becoming increasingly apparent today. Questions surrounding access to justice remain deeply embedded in the asymmetries of class power, which are often reinforced by the political nature of the judiciary. Constitutional law in India also remains unstable, as the principles informing judicial action have become increasingly less clear (5). Furthermore, the courts have come to maintain a disproportionate share of power and influence in the Indian political sphere (6). It is questionable if ICT can work to ameliorate some of these malignancies, or if its use will only come to reinforce them. If technology is appropriated in a way which serves to make the judicial process more transparent and accountable, protect the rights of citizens, and provide greater and more equitable access to justice, it may be safe to assume that a more tech-savvy judiciary is a positive development for citizens. Publishing legal information online, for example, currently allows for greater transparency in the law making process and allows dialogue on important issues of governance and citizenship.

However, it is almost unnecessary to reiterate that such outcomes are not guaranteed. Technology is often seen as neutral– the evaluative outcome of its application remains dependent on numerous variable factors. Most important is whether or not the government provides a legal framework conducive to the appropriation of ICT in ways which are considered to further the public interest. It may be useful to view the successful appropriation of ICT to judicial reform as a cumulative process, each step being a precondition to the other. It is clear to see how basic infrastructure such as civil courts in rural areas must be in place before the use of ICT can facilitate access to justice for individuals who remain peripheral to the legal system. Similarly, one would assume that laws would have to first be to be nondiscriminatory to all members of society before it could it can be widely accepted that more technology will better safeguard our rights and freedoms.

Without a legal framework which is considered to be socially just, greater speed of the judicial process, aided by technology, may become a tool which enables the judiciary to act more arbitrarily, more efficiency. This could be troubling for individuals who are already marginalized by certain policies or legal practices. Technology can also make it possible for judges to insulate themselves from the necessary checks and balances required in the law-making process. While Mr Gurani stated that ICT can help preserve judicial independence, it is questionable if the use of technology is an appropriate strategy to mitigate politicization of the judicial branch. Any frivolous efforts to spearhead the reform process through the introduction of ICT without the required commitment of judges and policy makers may be naïve at best. At worst, it could serve to reinforce what judicial bodies believe they do well without critically re-examining the fundamental roles, norms and principles of the Indian judicial system itself.

Online case-filing services may unintentionally, due to cost or lack of awareness, erect further barriers to justice for individuals who traditionally remained outside of the sphere of access. In the same vein, if ICT is favored for use in criminal rather than civil courts, technology may simply become a tool used to sentence people, more quickly. This scenario sits quite polemic to visions of technology serving as a tool to empower individuals to better assert their rights and seek justice. Foreshadowing the role ICT may play in the future of India's judicial reform process, SPANCO Technologies is currently piloting the use of video technology in criminal courts. Furthermore, India's judiciary has made several attempts to insulate itself from the provisions of the RTI act, indicating that new laws, and even new technologies, may not be able to change practice. There are also strong doubts looming that the Gramin Nyayalayas Act will be successful in leveraging the required financial support needed to construct civil courts in rural areas. Without the basic building blocks, it is difficult to envision how a National Judicial Technology Program will be successful in bringing "justice" to all who are awaiting it. Such instances serve as a light warning that technology, even within a favorable legal framework, may not necessarily spell a more accessible, transparent and accountable justice system.

A well-functioning judicial system is required to keep up with the demands of modern democratic society. It is unquestionable that technology can play an influential role in ensuring that the relationship between citizens and the government is strong and communicative. However, it is important to ask under what conditions may it be beneficial to implement technology’s use. Inferring from last week’s seminar, proposals and rationale behind potential reforms were made from an economic perspective; how ICT can be used to see that cases are filed and judgments are delivered more quickly to improve efficiency and rationalize resources. Whether technology will be appropriated to facilitate a more equitable justice system is unknown, but it is certain that such will require a coherent national reform strategy with long-term political backing. Short-shorted technological fixes may improve India's judicial efficiency in the short term, but may, however, overshadow opportunities to bring about a more transparent and accountable system in the long-term.

Notes

1. This was a notion emphasized often throughout the seminar.

2. Where these estimates were drawn is unknown.

3. For a concise account of how the use of ICT may be misappropriated in the judicial reform process, see E-Justice: Towards a Strategic Use of ICT in Judicial Reform by Waleed H. Malik

4. For an interesting account of India's judicial system, see "The Rise of Judicial Sovereignty" by Pratap Bhanu Mehta in "The State of India's Democracy", Oxford University Press, 2009.

5. Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

6. Ibid.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/what-will-be-the-role-of-ict-in-indias-judical-reform-process

The Road to Financial Inclusion

salelkar — 2014-06-03T06:46:18Z

It is increasingly frustrating to hear about wonderful steps being taken for financial inclusion within the private sector which completely ignores the question of inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Those of us working in the disabilities sector and those who live with the reality of disability know how difficult it is for persons with disabilities to even open bank accounts independently, and for those who are allowed to open bank accounts on their own, access to added services like ATM cards, chequebooks, internet banking — facilities which many of us take for granted — becomes a matter of discretion of bank managerial staff. The CIS Report on Banking Accessibility is a seminal document on the problems being faced on accessibility to banking, and it was hoped that the Reserve Bank of India would take cognizance of the numerous issued raised within it.

On May 21, 2014, the Reserve Bank of India issued a notification mandating all scheduled banks to take necessary steps to provide all existing ATMs / future ATMs with ramps for the same to be accessible for persons with disabilities, and provided further that the height of the ATMs should not create an impediment in their use by wheelchair users. The onus is on banks to provide this, and in cases where such changes are not practicable, this requirement may be dispensed with, for reasons recorded and displayed in branches or ATMs concerned. The requirements for ramps at entrances is also extended to bank branches (wherever feasible). The notification also notes the failure of Banks to ensure that at least 1/3rd of all their ATMs are "talking" ATMs with Braille keypads as per the 2009 Circular and now mandates that all ATMs installed from July 1, 2014 shall be talking ATMs with Braille Keypads.

The 2014 Notification goes one step forward and makes special provisions for providing magnifying glasses for persons with low vision in order to assist them in the carrying out of banking transactions. Banks should maintain a list of facilities for persons with disabilities and make this information available for customers prominently. On the May 27, a similar Notification, extending similar provisions to Regional Rural Banks, was published.

What does this mean for accessibility and banking? Definitely, the circulars come as a big boost to accessibility, particularly with regard to ATM facilities. ATM Machines which are designed to accommodate persons with disabilities do make a huge difference, though many, many persons have reported not even being given access to these facilities on account of their disabilities which has not been addressed in these circulars.

Additionally, it does not appear that non compliance is actionable, as Banks are merely advised to report the progress made in this regard periodically to their respective Customer Service Committee of the Board and ensure compliance. As pointed out above, reasons for non compliance are merely to be recorded and displayed. The procedures to approach the Ombudsman do not include accessible measures, and this continues to allow bank staff to act with impunity in denying banking facilities for persons with disabilities.

Despite actively intervening in the eventual Report of the Technical Committee on Banking of the RBI, disability rights activists have found that the banking industry has not been receptive to the needs of persons with disabilities. From this background, the RBI Notifications are a welcome start, though slightly premature — what is of utmost urgency on the part of the RBI is a categorical statement that no person with disability who comes to the bank to open a bank account will be denied access to the same. Additional tools which can be extremely beneficial to persons with disabilities, including mobile and internet banking, must be made accessible and available to persons with disabilities. It is also important for basic training on disability and communication be made part of syllabus for training of banking officials, and that regular interactions and training is encouraged for bank officials. It would be useful for all bank branches, and all departments of the RBI, to have an accessibility officer, a bank official given the additional responsibility of ensuring accessibility of the bank branch or the Department as the case may be, who is given specialized training in matters relating to accessibility. This would go a long way in ensuring that financial inclusion leaves no one behind.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/the-road-to-financial-inclusion

The Right to Read Campaign, now in Delhi

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:45:56Z

The Right to Read campaign, this time in Delhi, the national capital of the country has been announced. This is the third in the series. The previous two held in Calcutta and Chennai were highly successful and Delhi too promises quite a lot.

About 70 million Indians are unable to read printed material owing to various forms of disabilities. According to industry estimates, around 80,000-100,000 books get published every year in India of which only about 700 are made available for these persons. Technologies like screen readers make it possible for persons with disabilities to access knowledge in alternate formats like Braille, e-text, audio, large print, et cetera. Yet people are unable to convert books into accessible formats thanks to the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.

India needs to change the situation quickly and put an end to the shortage of books and enable these 70 million persons to participate in social life. For this we need to make use of the developments in technology which makes it possible for all persons to access knowledge and enable them to live a life of social inclusion and participation on par with the rest of society. People with disabilities too have a right to access information like other persons- let copyright laws recognize the diverse needs of persons with disabilities and open up the gates of knowledge to all.

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

To expedite copyright law reform by informing policy makers on the necessity and nature of amendment. This has to be made to the Indian Copyright Act 1957 to give effect to the rights of persons with disabilities.
To raise awareness on the issue amongst the parliamentarians, members of the judiciary, educationalists, publishers and the public.

The Campaign

The Indian campaign is a part of the global Right to Read campaign which was started by the World Blind Union in 2008. It is a nationwide campaign and seeks to:

Accelerate change in the copyright law;
Raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired; and
Gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-campaign

The Right to Information, The Right to Knowledge (Talk by Sam Pitroda & Carl Malamud)

pranesh — 2018-02-14T12:19:16Z

On October 15, 2017, Sam Pitroda and Carl Malamud will speak on open data and knowledge in India.

HasGeek and NUMA Bangalore are co-organizing a talk by two eminent internet pioneers — Sam Pitroda and Carl Malamud — on open data and knowledge in India. Pranesh Prakash of CIS will introduce the speakers and their work.

The Right to Information, The Right to Knowledge

Sam Pitroda and Carl Malamud will talk about their efforts in India, the U.S., and many other countries to help promote universal access to knowledge. They'll discuss the constitutional underpinnings of this right in India and some of the information they've been making available, including 3 lakh books from the Digital Library of India, 19,000 official standards from the Bureau of Indian Standards, and a raft of other resources such as the entire Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.

They will discuss how key laws such as the Right to Information make this possible but will focus more on how the world of open source and the Internet can turn that promise into a reality. Universal access to knowledge is the great unmet promise of our times, and they will talk about what we can all do to make this dream possible.

About the speakers

Dr. Sam Pitroda was a senior advisor to Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh and is widely credited for having led India’s telecommunications and technology revolutions in the 1980s. Dr. Pitroda holds 20 honorary PhDs, close to 100 worldwide patents, and helped create the first digital PBXs in the 1960s.

Carl Malamud started the first radio station on the Internet and is considered one of the pioneers of the U.S. open government movement. Carl runs Public.Resource.Org, an NGO which has placed hundreds of millions of pages of government information online, including all 19,000 Indian Standards.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/the-right-to-information-the-right-to-knowledge

The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights

salelkar — 2014-02-03T02:21:45Z

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2013 (The RPD Bill) went through three avatars since its commissioning in 2009 under the Sudha Kaul Committee. This blog post brings you a summary of the three stages since it was initially commissioned.

The first was the one the Committee proposed in 2011, after consultations with persons with disabilities and Disabled People's Organizations across the country; the second was notified by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 2012, which was in parts opposed to by several stakeholders; and the third, the RPD BIll of 2013, has actually brought the entire disability lobby, as it were, together, in being entirely appalled at the turn of events. The Bill, which is being furiously evaluated in the short time available between its being made available to the public and its impending introduction (and possible passing in the House), is full of flaws. Not only does it not adhere to the standards of the UNCRPD, but it also violates the spirit of the Indian Constitution, as well as contradicting existing case law, and most importantly it betrays the consensus and recommendations of persons with disabilities who were initially part of these recommendations.

Doubtlessly, while access to government establishments and entities like courts, collectorates, municipal offices, is important for persons with disabilities, there are other establishments which are equally important for persons with disabilities, for purposes of recreation, access to culture, and private services. I've made the point elsewhere that the law proposed is less of an empowering statute and more on the lines of the charity model – and in line with that, the indication is that persons with disabilities will only ever have to come in contact with the government and other entities, so they can enforce rights, take grants, petition government servants, etc. But if the statute itself is rights based, why so much focus on access to forums for rights enforcement, and not on others beyond this?

While they did have their flaws, the 2011 and 2012 versions of the Bill, which had rather comprehensive provisions with regard to ensuring accessibility. To start with, the right of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas, was recognized. The RPD Bill recognizes the obligation of the government to provide accessibility measures, but by now wording it in terms of a right, it does not do complete justice. The 2011 and 2012 drafts were replete with separate sections on the right to transport, personal mobility, communications, services, the built environment, etc. On the other hand, the RPD Bill clumsily lops all of these into a few sections, with repeated emphasis on infrastructure and services run by "establishments", which is, in effect, the government. There is no mention of website accessibility, though a cursory mention is made to the appropriate government ensuring that all contents available in audio, print and electronic media are in accessible format; and that persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning. Again, the ambiguity as to whether this extends to websites which are not run by the government, is not clear.

There is another aspect to accessibility which is lost under the Act by its failure to recognize it as a right. A senior person in the sector, who is blind, told me of an instance where he was barred from entering a bar with some friends. "You won't be able to tell what the bill is or how many drinks you've had", said the manager. He was therefore, being discriminated against entering a place, solely on the grounds of his disability. Persons who have been cured of leprosy are denied access to transport and other public facilities on the basis of outdated statutes. Persons who use crutches and calllipers are denied entry to religious places. The understanding of the Bill on accessibility is extremely limited, and limited to the built environment of government establishments, and this does nothing to extend the rights of persons with disabilities. Groups which are forwarding non negotiables for amendments to the Bill do not consider, at present, the right to accessibility to be a non negotiable. I do wonder, however, whether any of the other rights make sense when express and implied bars to access exist and are effectively encouraged, under this proposed law.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-bill-2013-and-lack-of-access-to-accessibility-rights

The Relaunch of Creative Commons India

praskrishna — 2013-12-11T08:12:50Z

Wikimedia India, the Centre for Internet and Society, and Acharya Narendra Dev College invite you to the Relaunch of Creative Commons India in New Delhi on November 12, 2013 with the Minister of State for Human Resource Development Dr. Shashi Tharoor as the Chief Guest.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

In simple words, Creative Commons helps you share your knowledge and creativity with the world.

Some more facts about Internet licenses

Ever wondered what "Some Rights Reserved" means?

Copyright grants to creators a bundle of exclusive rights over their creative works, which generally include the right to reproduce, distribute, display, make adaptations, perform, sell and so on. The phrase “All Rights Reserved” is often used by owners to indicate that they reserve all of the rights granted to them under the law. When copyright expires, the work enters the public domain, and the rightsholder can no longer stop others from engaging in those activities under copyright, with the exception of moral rights reserved to creators in some jurisdictions. Creative Commons licenses offer creators a spectrum of choices between retaining all rights and relinquishing all rights (public domain), an approach we call "Some Rights Reserved."

Is Creative Commons against copyright?

Absolutely not. CC has responded to claims to the contrary. CC licenses are copyright licenses, and depend on the existence of copyright to work. CC licenses are legal tools that creators and other rightsholders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. Those who want to make their work available to the public for limited kinds of uses while preserving their copyright may want to consider using CC licenses. Others who want to reserve all of their rights under copyright law should not use CC licenses.

Relaunch

Dr. Savithri Singh, Principal, Acharya Narendra Dev College will be the Master of Ceremony and the Moderator for the sessions:

Time	Detail
16.00 16.30	Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Government of India: Initiatives of MHRD around Openly Licensed Content
16.30 16.45	Question and Answer Session
16.45 17.00	Sam Pitroda (TBC), Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations: Creative Commons and Open Government Data
17.00 17.05	Question and Answer Session
17.05 17.25	Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Pratham Books: Creative Commons and Pratham Books Case Study (Including Question and Answer Session)
17.25 17.40	Moksh Juneja, President, Executive Committee, Wikimedia India Chapter: Creative Commons and Wikipedia (Including Question and Answer Session)
17.40 18.00	Lawrence Liang, Co-founder of Alternative Law Forum: Creative Commons and Open Access to Scholarly Journals (Including Question and Answer Session)
18.00	Tea

VIDEO

Registration

Please register here to attend the event: http://ccindia.doattend.com/ Registration is free.
Please carry a soft or hard copy of the confirmation email to the venue.
Seating will be on first come first served basis.

Invite to the Relaunch of Creative Commons India

Link to the meta page on Wiki: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Events/Creative_Commons_India_launch

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/relaunch-of-creative-commons-india

The Quest for Education – Persons with Disabilities, Severely Challenged

nirmita — 2016-11-30T15:38:55Z

Education is the fundamental building block of development; it leads to an improved quality of life, employment, social acceptance and inclusion, national development and intellectual growth.

Published in Your Story on November 24, 2016

The right to education and the current census figures

Over the past decade, multiple efforts and initiatives associated with policy and programme towards achieving the goal of education have taken place. However, there are still millions of children with disabilities and students who are struggling to access basic and higher education and for whom economic independence appears to be an elusive dream.

The 2011 census figures show that the literacy rates for persons with disabilities are much lower than that of the non-disabled population of the country and even within that, certain disabilities and women across disabilities have a lower percentage. The overall literacy rate for persons with disabilities is 59 percent compared to 74 percent for the general population. The literacy level of women with disabilities in urban areas is 61 percent, which is 9 percent lower than their male counterparts. While women with disabilities in rural areas are worse with a literacy rate of 38 percent, 20 percent lower than disabled males. And people with multiple disabilities fare the worst, with a 35.8 percent literacy rate. Their education needs in terms of content, technology, training and support remain unfulfilled.

Challenges faced by the disabled

The issues faced by children with different disabilities vary. For instance, in the case of children with print impairment, there is need for aggressive implementation of schemes to provide assistive technology since most disabled students do not have access to technologies in most states. Students who are blind are dependent upon Braille materials, which often do not reach them before half the school term is over. And this only supports the bare minimum need in terms of reading and not any extra knowledge building requirements. In some states, laptops are being distributed; however, these are unaccompanied by any training requirements, so it is unclear how many students are really able to use their devices. In places where these devices are available, they are mostly provided to students from the ninth standard.

Thus, in some states, laptops are being distributed; however, these are unaccompanied by any training requirements, so it is unclear how many students are really able to use their devices. In places where these devices are available, they are mostly provided to students from the ninth standard. Thus, transition becomes difficult and they find it hard to write their own exams. So while their sighted counterparts are experimenting with technology from a much earlier age, they are introduced to it at a much later stage, by which time their colleagues are far ahead of them.

Children with hearing impairments also face many challenges. They are isolated from mainstream communication as well; there are only around 250 sign language interpreters in India and sometimes one person has to cater to the requirements of an entire state. Hence, they grow and are educated in isolation without proper means of integration in inclusive schools. The physical environments in most schools also tend to be inaccessible for those with mobility impairments.

It is a rather dismal scenario content wise too. The course content put out by different boards is not in accessible formats, so organisations serving the blind have to convert them into an accessible format. There is a strain on resources. In the case of regional language content, the expense of typing out Telugu or Tamil is high and often increases the cost of the book 10-fold. Just converting the basic course syllabus for any one subject for a BA course can run into lakhs. Hence, there is very limited access to books.

The third challenge is the lack of trained manpower and resources to provide an enriching reading experience for a child with a disability. Children not only have to deal with restrictive resource conditions, but also difficult social conditions and stigma at school. Attitudinal changes need to occur and a lot of this begins at home and school. Consider this, in a rural setting; students in a class have access to a teacher full time during school hours. But there may be only one special needs teacher catering to students with multiple disabilities across several schools. So instead of having more support, a student with disability has to actually deal with severely limited support.

Often these teachers are ironically paid much lesser than other teachers, considering that they actually need more skills and patience to teach children with disabilities. Only in the field of disability does one encounter a situation where a specialisation is undervalued and under paid, whereas in all other genre of professions like medicines, one has to do a generalisation before a specialisation. What sort of prospects then do we offer children with disabilities? What we need is resource centres at each college and school, or if that is not possible, then at least resource centres at district level coordinating support in an appropriate manner with adequately paid and skilled teachers.

Promoting technology

Promoting use of technology and open source software and imparting training at an early age will go a long way in making students with disabilities self-sufficient and independent. And of course, the issue of content is of primary importance. All boards must embrace accessible standards such as EPUB 3.0 for publications and WCAG 2.0 for their websites and make course content available in accessible formats. Exemption of certain topics should be replaced by facilitating learning using innovative methods and tools. Importantly, there also needs to be focus on providing education targeted towards profession and gainful employment.

Clearly, there is a long way to go before we can talk of inclusive education for children with disabilities; there is a severe shortage of even exclusive or special education. To improve the situation, individual piecemeal efforts alone will not make a difference. It is essential to have a systemic approach to inclusive education, with sufficient implementation and infrastructural support, if we are to progress to a point where every child with disability is encouraged to learn and be prepared for a world of employment, independence and dignity.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/your-story-nirmita-narasimhan-november-24-2016-quest-for-education-persons-with-disabilities-severely-challenged

The print-impaired millions and their right to read

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:10:56Z

Books, books everywhere, but not a word to read. This is the scenario for the approximately 70 million print-impaired in India, a sizeable population that includes the visually-impaired young people as well the elderly — whose vision depletes with advancing age.

If you are visually impaired and want to read the latest bestseller, the chances are that you would be staring at a blank, almost-impenetrable wall. The reason: hardly about 500 to 700 of the approximately one lakh titles that are published in India every year are converted to formats like Braille, audio books and e-books for the benefit of this population, as well as versions with large prints for those with weak vision.

Now, as the Budget Session of parliament is likely to consider amendments to the Copyright Act, those advocating a ‘right to read’ for the print-impaired are hoping that among the changes would be a permission to convert books to various accessible formats like Bookshare or Daisy Book Forum for this population that want to travel into the magic world of words but are forced to be out of it.

A National Right to Read Campaign, backed by the Global Right to Read Campaign (GRRC), is already on the job, creating public awareness against what activists call the ‘exclusion’ of millions of Indians from the ‘fundamental right’ to read books.

While there are technologies and software that have enabled this population to access print materials in electronic formats that are read aloud by the machine, it is still illegal for the print-impaired people to, say, scan a book and read it using a screen reader software (such as Adobe Read Aloud) or share it with others. The matters are complicated even more by lack of international laws that allow cross-border sharing of accessible-format books between libraries in India and other countries.

“Even though the International Publishers Association is looking for a licensing system, specifically for conversion of books to accessible formats for the visually impaired, publishers are not publishing in these versions,” says Chris Friend, chair of the GRRC and World Blind Union (WBU) representative.

However, 600 authors — including Arun Shourie, Tarun Tejpal, Meghnad Desai and Girish Karnad — and publishing houses like Harper Collins, Marg Publications, etc have pledged support to the campaign.

Persons who cannot read print are not only the blind, as is the popular perception. A print impaired person can be either visually impaired or those who have other physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities such as dyslexia, autism, learning disabilities, etc, point out Sam Taraporevala and Nirmita Narasimhan of the Centre for Internet and Society, which is spearheading the Right to Read Campaign along with the Daisy Forum.

Dismal scene

In developed countries, according to WBU estimates, only about five per cent of published books are available to print-impaired persons. In developing countries like India, the percentage is reduced to a dismal 0.5 per cent. There is increasing global attention on the issue in the form of a Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, which is being discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) of the UN, and for which India has expressed its support.

Disabled rights activists like Javed Abidi are for faster availability of books in other formats, and say that it’s a ‘matter of shame’ that it has not been the norm despite India moving fast along the information highway.

Publishers like Cambridge University Press and Sage, while joining the movement for making books accessible for the print impaired, are a little apprehensive about the potential of abuse of the converted formats by book pirates as well as violation of rights of authors, whose permissions are necessary to convert any book to another format under the law.

“Publishers fear leakage of accessible formats into the open market,” says Manas Saikia of CUP. Something that Friend completely pooh poohs. “It’s a myth that we visually impaired are going to rob authors’ rights or leak the books into the open market. The Daisy format watermarks every converted production, and any leakage can be traced back to the source. Also, some publishers are opposing the WBU treaty at WIPO saying we want free books. That is another myth. We are ready to pay, just give us books to read,” he says.

But the debate in public space seems to be creating some impact. Even as publishers and authors are coming out in large numbers to support access of books to the print impaired, the human resource development ministry is working on providing an exception for conversion to various formats if it is for the print impaired.

In fact, G R Raghavendra, registrar for copyrights at the ministry, confirms that such a move is afoot to remove this ‘unfortunate’ lacuna in the law. Quite naturally, everyone who loves the printed word is hoping that the print-impaired book worms will sooner than latter witness sunnier days.

For the original article in the Deccan Herald

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/print-impaired-millions

The Present — and Future — Dangers of India's Draconian New Internet Regulations

anja — 2011-08-02T07:22:24Z

The uproar surrounding India's Internet Control Rules makes clear that in the Internet age, as before, the active chilling of freedom of expression by the state is unacceptable in a democracy. Yet if India's old censorship regimes are to be maintained in this new context, the state will have little choice but to do just that. Are we ready to rethink the ways in which we deal with free speech and censorship as a society? Asks Anja Kovacs in this article, published in Caravan, 1 June 2011.

WHAT ACTUALLY DEFINES A DEMOCRACY? It is a trickier question than it first seems, and yet it is worthwhile, at least every now and then, to remind ourselves of what constitutes the political system we hold so dear. Free and fair elections; an independent legislative, executive and judiciary; and freedom of the press—these are all vital ingredients. But what may be democracy’s defining element, or at least its sine qua non, is the right to freedom of opinion and expression: without this equal right to “seek, receive and impart information”, as the universal declaration of Human Rights frames it, a system of governance of the people, for the people and by the people simply remains meaningless. Without a free flow of information, democracy does not exist.

It is with good reason, then, that bloggers, tech enthusiasts and watchdogs from civil society have been up in arms over two new sets of rules, notified in April 2011, that will impact every Indian’s Internet use. Formulated by the Central Government under powers conferred to it by the IT (Amendment) Act 2008, one set governs what is known as the liability of intermediaries. This determines in which cases, and to what extent, companies ranging from Google and Facebook to local Internet service providers (ISPs) are legally responsible for the content that you upload.

The second set of rules pertains to cybercafes. In a manner reminiscent of the licence Raj, there are new registration standards for these establishments, which go beyond the usual requirements for commercial enterprises and include detailed procedures to identify all users. Cybercafes will be required to maintain and submit, on a monthly basis, logs that detail the use of all computers in the cafe and to keep backups of all users’ browser histories, to be maintained for at least one year.

There is much that is wrong with these rules, but what makes them such a particular threat to freedom of expression? Some effects are likely to be indirect: for example, the Internet has the potential to emerge as an important avenue for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to express and discuss concerns so rarely taken into account by the mainstream media. But by putting into place stringent identification requirements for cybercafe users, who are likely to be less well-off, the access of underprivileged users in particular will be further constrained. Moreover, the combination of the need for identification with the requirement for cybercafes to keep a log of every user’s browser history means that anonymity online is now effectively made impossible in India. For whistleblowers, artists, writers or anyone desiring anonymity, there is no longer a place in Indian cyberspace.

But the most troubling impact on freedom of expression of the new mandates remains direct: in their attempt to delineate the liability of Internet providers and websites, the new rules for “intermediary due diligence” actually add important new curbs on freedom of expression to Indian law. India’s Constitution recognises a fairly extensive list of so-called “reasonable restrictions” and these are more or less replicated in the Rules: “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence”. But the Rules, which were never vetted by Parliament, do not limit themselves to these Constitutional provisions. Rather surprisingly, they add a whole new slew of qualifications, many of which are so vague, moreover, that they leave the door wide open to abuse. Thus, for example, the Rules impose a blanket ban on impersonation and make it illegal to share any information that is “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “blasphemous”, “disparaging” or “insulting any other nation”. None of these terms have been explained or defined.

Lacking the precision that would allow citizens to precisely regulate their behaviour in line with the law, overly broad regulations such as these are widely believed to have a chilling effect: in order not to violate the law, people begin to censor themselves—to keep quiet rather than protesting or engaging. But in this particular case, the effects are likely to be particularly pernicious because of a second provision made by the Rules: wherever an intermediary receives a complaint claiming that any information they store, host or publish contravenes the provisions of the Rules, the intermediary is required to take down this information within 36 hours. Censorship, in other words, will effectively be privatised.

The prospect is all the more depressing because the intermediaries have little incentive to resist participating in such censorship. Given the restrictions on free speech that are effectively enforced within Indian society by vigilante groups, especially in the last two decades, the possible impact of these rules is even more frightening. If Facebook has little reason to uphold your right to maintain a page that is critical of say, Gandhiji, what prevents vigilante groups from policing our lives online even more than they do offline? The only recourse available to the owner of the confiscated information will be going to court—meaning that defending one’s own freedom of speech online will require endless litigation.

These are worrying omens, in other words, for those who believe that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democracy. But to what extent do these new provisions represent a radical break with India’s existing restrictions on free speech? Since its founding, the independent Indian nation-state has wielded censorship as a tool to both contain the conflicts that emanate from India’s tremendous diversity and to ensure its homogeneous social, moral and political development. If the list of reasonable restrictions in the Constitution is fairly long, this is because the country’s lawmakers were clear at the time of Independence that freedom of expression would need to be subordinated to the social reforms necessary to put the country on Nehru’s path to development. India’s far-reaching anti-hate speech laws, too, derive from the desire to combat ill will and disharmony. Since the Internet now makes it so much easier to publish opinions that are hurtful, or indeed “grossly harmful” or “disparaging”, the new Rules can in many ways be seen as an attempt to continue this strategy in the Internet age.

The problem, however, is that irrespective of the merits of such a strategy in the past, within the radically altered communicative context of the Internet, it is simply no longer feasible. As the Internet guru Clay Shirky has argued, earlier systems of media and communication worked on a “filter, then publish” principle. Because publishing a newspaper, for example, is expensive, editors and journalists take upon themselves the role of filtering out the “worthwhile” from the “not-so-worthwhile”. Without them making that vital differentiation between “news” and “information” on the one hand and “drivel” on the other, newspapers would simply not be viable. In the Internet age, however, this principle has been reversed. The arrival of social media especially has made it so easy and cheap for anyone to share their opinions that the mantra now is: first publish, then filter. The gatekeeper role of the traditional media stands much reduced.

For the Indian government’s strategy of using censorship as a tool to mitigate social conflict, this shift has two important consequences. The first one is quantitative: it means that there are now far more speech acts to police. That undoubtedly has made the state’s task much more difficult. But there is also a second, qualitative difference: it also means that whether the government approves of this or not, there will now be a far wider range of people who will make their voices heard, and thus, a far wider range of opinions that will be expressed in the public sphere. And it is precisely to stop such a diversity from emerging that much censorship in India has been justified over the years. As a 1980 report of the Working Group on National Film Policy argued: “if the overall objective of censorship is to safeguard generally accepted standards of morality and decency, in addition to the well recognised interests of the State, the standards of censorship applicable to freedom of expression cannot be very much ahead of the standards of behaviour commonly accepted in society. Censorship can become liberal only to the extent society itself becomes genuinely liberal”.

What such statements conveniently elide, of course, is the enormous diversity within Indian society itself. Whose standards of behaviour are they thinking of? Kashmiri, Manipuri, Chhattisgarhi? Gandhian, feminist, communist? Adivasi, Muslim, Dalit? Who represents this community of the nation? Censorship always benefits the status quo, and the Indian case has been no different. The rise of the Internet has merely revealed, with increasing frequency, cracks in the supposedly uniform moral, social and political development of India that the government envisioned. If the old censorship regime is to nevertheless be maintained in this new context, it will therefore increasingly require the active chilling of freedom of expression on the part of the state. What the uproar surrounding the Internet Control Rules makes clear is that in the Internet age, as before, this is an unacceptable route for a modern democracy. A new model to deal with diversity and dissent is urgently required.

What makes our democracy? With the undeniable challenges that the Internet throws to our established ways of operating, it is time to reopen this debate as a society, rather than leaving it to politicians and bureaucrats. The open forum of the Internet may often offend, or rattle our sensibilities and beliefs, but it also presents new possibilities for engagement and debate. Will we take this opportunity?

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-present-and-future-dangers-of-indias-draconian-new-internet-regulations

THE PORN ULTIMATUM?

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T09:56:24Z

Ravi Sharma (name changed), a 22-year old auto driver, watches adult-rated movie clips on his smartphone whenever he is on a tea break. Like most of his friends in New Delhi, Sharma has a flash drive reserved for sleazy movies. Sharma’s access to pornography could soon become a crime, much like assault or drunken driving, if Kamlesh Vaswani has his way.

This article by Adith Charlie, Rajesh Kurup and Priyanka Pani was published in the Hindu Business Line on May 21, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Vaswani, an Indore-based lawyer had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court, requesting to make watching porn a non-bailable offence. He also wants a complete ban on pornography. He says he has his reasons too.

In a recent incident in the capital, a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two men and left to die. According to media reports, the accused had watched porn on their mobile phones minutes before the crime. There has been a 7.1 per cent increase in crime against women nationwide since 2010, as per data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Vaswani believes that the free availability of porn is making the country unsafe for women.

Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar, member of National Commission for Women (NCW), says that viewing porn, especially at an impressionable age, becomes “an addiction and trains the mind in an inhumane and sadist way”.

According to Google Trends, India ranks fourth in the world for searching the word ‘porn’, a testimony that pornography, mainly electronic, is available across the country. New Delhi has the dubious distinction of the highest-worldwide percentage of searches for “porn” in 2012.

As smartphones become ubiquitous and cheaper (price starts around Rs 3,000) they offer a perfect medium for viewing adult content. A 2011 study by IMRB found that one in every five Indian mobile users wants adult content on 3G-enabled phones.

A different view

Vaswani is not the only crusader against pornography, but is a representative of the minority. The majority favours another strand of thinking: that what an adult views in his private space should not be controlled by the establishment.

They feel that increased censorship of the web would clamp down on the constitutionally enshrined principles of the freedom of speech and expression.

But what is termed as pornography, or what degree of obscenity should be blocked?

Interestingly, the term pornography when used in relation to an offence is not defined in any statutes in India. It is obscenity that has been effectively explained in the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The section 67 of the Information Technology Act states that publishing or transmission of obscene and sexually explicit material in electronic form is punishable. Child pornography, is prohibited under Section 67B of IT Act.

According to the Indian Penal Code (Section 292) a person in mere possession of the obscene stuff for his personal use without any intention of producing or disseminating the material is not culpable.

However, obscenity means different things for different people.

“In countries such as Saudi Arabia, even showing cleavage falls under pornographic purview. So, who decides what is morally acceptable in the Indian society?” asks Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Technologically possible

A blanket ban on porn Web sites, as is the case in Denmark and Australia (for extreme content), risks banning innocent Web sites too. In 2008, whistle blower WikiLeaks had released the names of sites which were blocked by Denmark’s regulators. Many regular sites were erroneously included in the list. Porn, available in India, is mainly hosted on overseas servers, making it difficult to monitor them, while those on domestic platforms can be easily restricted, according to Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director of Fortinet, a network security provider. Yet, the technology exists for making a full-fledged ban on porn possible.

In case the Supreme Court upholds the PIL, the onus of implementation will be on the telecom regulator, the Department of Telecommunications and, the Department of Information Technology.

Raman says that companies like his can provide a ‘semi-inline’ solution, for a multi-million dollar fee, to block porn. It is unlikely that DIT and DoT will bear the cost of the entire exercise.

Thus, the ISPs would have to make the investments for a porn-free internet, says an industry official.

Sexual Behaviour

But then could pornography be solely responsible for aggressive sexual behaviour? Contemporary literature does provide some insights. Watching pornography does contribute to an increased risk of violent behaviour but only in men who have aggressive sexual tendencies, as per research by Neil Malamuth, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In other words, porn does not turn all ordinary men into rapists.

“There has been definitely a spurt in sex-related crimes in the country. However, we can’t say that a total ban on porn will free the society from such evil, but yes there should be a restriction on content on Internet,” NCW’s Prabhavalkar said.

On a TV talk show, porn star and actress Sunny Leone had said: “It's complete nonsense to blame rape on adult material out there. Education starts at home. It's the moms and dads sitting with their children and teaching them what is right and wrong.”

When eWorld approached Leone to understand her outlook on the PIL, husband Daniel Webber said that they do not have any views on the matter. “Whatever is decided by the Supreme Court in this country is decided,” he said.

The Establishment

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, says that the government cannot cite the IT Act and block content on grounds of it being immoral following the 2009 amendments to the Act.

In 2010, the Bombay High Court, had rejected a PIL filed by Janhit Manch. The NGO wanted the court to direct the government to block pornographic Web sites on the grounds that they have “an adverse influence, leading youth on a delinquent path”. The court held that it would be unconstitutional to do so as it would be infringing on the citizens’ freedom of expression.

Further, the Court observed said that the petitioner should file a complaint under the IT Act, if he feels aggrieved.

Says Nithianandan Balagopalan, a Mumbai-based lawyer: “Any law that falls foul of fundamental rights of a citizen of India is open to be challenged in a court of law and can be struck down as being ‘ultra fires’ if indeed found to be so.

Yet, Vaswani believes he has a strong case. “The court (in the 2010 Janhit Manch PIL) might have passed orders safeguarding the freedom of free speech and expression. What we are discussing here is not speech, but conduct. This cultural pollution has to stop,” he was quoted in the media.

Some experts believe that proper enforcement of existing laws are more important that enacting new ones. “There should be stringent punishment for those involved in organised production and distribution of pornographic material. The police must not be lenient with such people,” says Ramesh Vaidyanathan, Managing Partner of Advaya Legal.

Around the world

India is not the only democracy in the world to consider a ban on pornography. The latest to join the ranks is Iceland, which too wants a ban as part of its attempts to completely do away with the country’s sex industry. In 2009, it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes, and later in 2010 it banned strip clubs.

A ban on porn would mean restrictions on the use of the Internet. A free Internet stimulates innovation. The world's largest democracy and a model for much of the developing world, India is set to become one of the most important test cases for the future of Internet freedom globally. Any decision by the Supreme Court on this front would be path-breaking, ramifications of which would be felt for a long time to come.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindu-businessline-adith-charlie-rajesh-kurup-priyanka-pani-may-21-2013-the-porn-ultimatum

The policy langurs

Shyam Ponappa — 2012-05-10T10:15:17Z

The comforts of civilised living for all Indians require dedicated collective effort. The article by Shyam Ponappa was published in the Business Standard on 6 January 2011.

At this difficult point in our hapless trajectory as we thread our way through the divine comedy, there is a sudden burst of light, cutting through the gloom of the new year: an uncharacteristic but effective bipartisan effort by a group of parliamentarians in dealing with a practical problem. This is the saga of the hapless and troublesome monkeys of Raisina Hill and its environs, booted out by the Brits to build the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Central Secretariat, and the parliamentarians who live on Mahadev Road nearby. Press reports say that BJP Spokesman Prakash Javadekar adopted a problem-solving approach by suggesting to six of his neighbours (five Congress MPs and one Independent) that they collectively hire a langur patrol to shoo away the monkeys that have been marauding in their gardens. Five of the six responded positively, and so they have a langur patrol, as do a number of government buildings there. And the monkeys stay away.

Why is this important? Because of how powerfully it illustrates the obvious: that collective, goal-oriented action can be very effective in achieving results. Now, if this could be extended to bipartisan initiatives (in the sense of government and the Opposition in the context of our fragmented politics), e.g. in building national assets like infrastructure, then constructive, forward-looking policies can be framed, and we can start building on what has gone before. This will take us past the blight of being in a perpetual stall. One example is resource-sharing for countrywide broadband and communications services. Another is our approach to energy production and supply. And so on.

The bipartisan imperative

I have written earlier on the rationale for spectrum- and network-sharing for broadband and telecommunications.

The framework for this kind of resource-sharing and organisation cannot be done without bipartisan efforts at the policy formulation stage for conceptualisation and during implementation, because various state and local governments will be involved, as will many central government ministries and departments. A bipartisan approach is also essential for devising supportive tax policies, including the development and execution of uniform, inexpensive rights-of-way charges at the state level. Not least will be the question of spectrum pricing, a matter muddied by so much contention and confused thinking regarding the economics and the technology, aggravated by opportunists seeking to make a killing, together with the well-intentioned but ill-informed flailing of strident advocates urging counterproductive measures like cancelling licences without due process and/or holding more auctions, all supposedly in the national interest, oblivious of the consequences.(Click for OPTIC FIBRE CABLE NETWORK)

To appreciate the compelling logic, consider the network of an organisation like RailTel, with over 35,000 route km of optical fibre cable (OFC) network, or Gailtel with about 14,000 route km of OFC and planning close to 19,000 OFC in the next few years (interactive maps at: http://www.gailonline.com/gailnewsite/businesses/telecomnetwork.html).

BSNL has over 67,000 route km in the southern region alone, and other PSUs and private operators like Bharti Airtel and Reliance have their own extensive networks. Combining or integrating these will shift the focus to the tasks of last-mile access and spectrum deployment to achieve potential connectivity for most households and users.

Imagine the potential with some (three or four?) consortiums of wholesale service providers for the country having access to the combined networks of all or several such owners, including the collective capacity in terms of spectrum, access, aggregation and backhaul. These, in turn, could enable access to many retailers for local services to end users.

A second substantive aspect of such a bipartisan initiative is in structuring the national backbone facilities organisation, e.g. on the lines of Singapore’s OpenNet*. This may be an opportunity to capitalise on the BSNL and MTNL networks and revive them, perhaps as the anchor investors (possibly with other PSUs, such as RailTel, GAIL, and Powergrid). This anchor investor consortium could hold, for instance, 30 per cent of the equity in the venture. Other participants could include international companies like Axia, which design, build and operate next generation networks. Axia started out in Canada over 10 years ago and now has projects in France, Spain and Singapore, and has bid for a project in America. Other participants could be like Spectrum Bridge, a US company which runs centrally managed spectrum networks in America in the TV “white spaces”, the digital dividend from TV spectrum reallocated for telecom purposes. Their database-driven approach could be applied to the entire pooled spectrum of a large network with the participation of systems integrators like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, or IBM.

A third potential initiative is to encourage R&D and applications, perhaps seeking the development of local standards for wireless communications in the long term, even the Holy Grail of inexpensive “cognitive radio” (self-managing end-user equipment) with open spectrum. The size of our market offers the potential for such ambitious and potentially beneficial development. This will need policy support, especially for collaboration between defence and the private sector, with the creation of sustained support over a long period.

We know the apocryphal tales like that of the four bulls and the lion: the bulls are safe as long as they stay united, but when they squabble among themselves, the lion picks them off one by one. There is Aesop’s fable of the old man who shows his sons that while they can easily break one stick at a time, the same sticks bound together cannot be broken. Or the Mongolian story of the five siblings, the ancestors of the Mongolian clans, whose mother shows them that while each can easily break a single arrow, the five arrows tied together are unbreakable.

Despite this knowledge and evidence that the comforts of civilised living for all Indians require dedicated collective effort, we refuse to work to this truism of the need for collaborative effort. Suddenly, Mr Javadekar’s can-do Langur Initiative changes the game.

Even as the due process of law continues with regard to past wrongdoing, our parliamentarians should be grappling with substantive issues of nation-building such as those described above, instead of wasting time on tearing each other down.

Read the original in the Business Standard here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/policy-langurs

The Phantom Public: The Role of Social Media in Democracy

Admin — 2019-05-01T05:09:19Z

Amber Sinha delivered an open lecture at Ambedkar University, New Delhi on 3 April 2019.

India has over 500 million internet users — over a third of its total population — making it the country with the second largest number of Internet users after China. For the world’s largest democracy, the Internet should be a boon. After all, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, had envisioned the Internet to as an “open platform that allows anyone to share information, access opportunities and collaborate across geographical boundaries.” The democratization of information it facilitated should have led to a more informed citizenry, but instead what we have is the complete opposite. The average digital citizen in India maintains a near perpetual information illiteracy about where they receive news and information from, whether or not it is true and how it is intended to manipulate them. This is, in large part, because social media has become the primary source of information.

The problems of the public, how it may get access to meaningful information, how it organises itself, and how public opinion is shaped are now deeply impacted by the rise of social media and messaging platforms as political tools of targeting, gathering and organising. How this new media thwarts and enables the goals of the public in India at present is the primary subject matter of this talk. We will cover a range of issues such as fake news and hate speech on social media, the use Facebook by Cambridge Analytica in elections, and how online platforms are governed, particularly with a view towards elections.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-phantom-public-the-role-of-social-media-in-democracy

The Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report

pranesh — 2011-10-03T09:31:30Z

iCOMMONS, the OPEN VIDEO ALLIANCE, and the CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY have initiated a research project which seeks to survey the online video environment in India and the opportunities this new medium presents for creative expression and civic engagement. This report seeks to define key issues in the Indian context and begins to develop a short-term policy framework to address them.

The basic assumption of this paper is that the online video medium should support creative and technical innovation, competition, and public participation, and that open source technology can help develop these traits. These assumptions are not elaborated upon here. Instead, this report looks at questions of “openness” that are not strictly technological; that are specific to video in India; and that provide points of entry to a simple policy framework.

The paper is organized in the following parts:

The first chapter, THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF INDIAN VIDEO, provides a brief historical timeline of events from the first screening of the Lumiere Brothers films in India in 1896, through the beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter traces the traditional channels of dissemination of video content in India, and establishes the close and unique bond that the visual medium has formed with Indian society.
The second chapter, DIGITAL MEDIA AND NETWORK TRANSFORMATIONS, looks at recent media transformations like the rise of the Internet and peer-to-peer networking, the proliferation of telecommunications, and other developments which form the backbone of the emerging online video medium. Peer-to-peer and associative networking provides a new means of content circulation throughout the country.
The third chapter, MAPPING CONTENT ON THE INTERNET, traces the various types of visual content visible over these new networks, exploring case studies of videos circulating on the Internet which have raised new questions of censorship, freedom of speech, and the openness of the medium.
The fourth chapter, THE ‘OPEN VIDEO’ QUESTION, creates a judgment-based framework to assess the openness of the medium. This chapter lays out a series of questions around the broad spectrum of openness, viewed from various perspectives of access, participation, open source technology, and availability, with the intent of mapping the circumstances under which online video operates in India. Moreover, the chapter focuses on the structural limitations to video which can be addressed by policy, or even an absence of policy.

Whereas the report consciously makes an effort to explore not only transitory web videos but also films, the terms ‘video’ and ‘film’, in many parts are treated interchangeably. Although films and videos represent different traditional mediums of recording, the interest of this report in examining the ‘online video’ content in India, consists of both types of material—accessed perhaps with little distinction.

The scope of this paper is extremely broad and touches upon a wide variety of issues in India, where each area has a peculiar specificity of its situation—urban or rural, geographic, and so on. Links and references have been provided in the footnotes for background readings of these issues.

Click here to download the report. [PDF, 1.22 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india

The Newly Updated Indic Keyboard App Now Supports 22 Asian Languages

subha — 2016-06-18T18:21:03Z

This blog post was written in my personal capacity.

The blog post was published by Global Voices on June 12, 2015.

The Indic Project, which belongs to the Indian non-profit Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC), has released a new and significantly upgraded version of its input app “Indic Keyboard” for the Android mobile operating system. This major update comes roughly one year after the app's initial release in March 2014.

Indic Keyboard now supports 22 Asian languages, including 18 Indian languages apart from English, and 54 input layouts. The 23 supported languages are Assamese, Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Manipuri, Maithili, Marathi, Mon, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. On its company blog, SMC lists the various features included in the new update:

Addition of 7 new languages and several new layouts.
We now support 23 languages and 54 layouts in total.
All new Setup wizard makes it simpler for you to get started.
Material design, ability to changes themes.
Material white, Material dark, Holo blue and Holo white themes are available.
Intelligent word suggestion for transliteration – type faster with fewer keystrokes.
For languages with complex letters we now have the ability to type ZWJ and ZWNJ characters directly.
Arabic keyboard – by popular demand.
Code base is updated to support Android Lollipop edition.
A number of bug fixes (e.g. 1 and 2).

So far, the updated keyboard is enjoying a warm response from users:

20,000 people upgraded Indic Keyboard in first 2 days after its new release.

— Jishnu (@jishnu7) May 30, 2015

Brilliant for #Android users interested in writing in their mother tongue. Indic Keyboard v 2.0 supports 23 languages http://t.co/ZVoWuMPFai

— Karthik Subramanian (@chennaikat) May 29, 2015

One commenter writes:

Vernacular computing is a blocker for the complete roll out of computers and Internet to the world. Projects like these are welcome patches to fix that issue.

Typing on touch-screens can be rethought. Especially when it comes to Indic languages which have about double the number of characters compared to English. We shouldn’t constrain our minds to think in traditional layouts. Transliteration is a very good idea. But it puts the dependency back on English. We need radicalize the input methods for non-English languages and avoid the dependence of English altogether.

Anivar Aravind, Executive Director of Indic Project at SMC, and Jishnu Mohan, a Project Administrator at SMC, recently sat down with Rising Voices to discuss the updated app.

Rising Voices (RV): What was the objective behind bringing this mobile app for Indian languages? What has been Indic Project's core motivation?

Anivar Aravind (AA): Indic project focuses on community powered Research and Development of free and open source Indian language information infrastructure for majority of India that does not speak English. “It is pretty clear that unlike most other countries, India will be a “mobile-first” country because the first computing device for most Indians will be the mobile and not the PC.

RV: Why you think language display and input are important for Indian users?

AA: Unavailability of Indian Language interfaces, keyboards and fonts limits freedom of expression of people in their native languages and prevents them from tapping the full potential offered by smart phones and Internet. We believe all mobile users must able to read and write in their native language using their choice of layout. Indic Keyboard is coming as a part of our effort for digital inclusion on the mobile frontier.

RV: What is the reach of the app at this moment?

AA: Indic Keyboard received good user base of 168K+ downloads so far, primarily based on user reviews, without any advertisements and promotions.

RV: Can you share how Indic Keyboard was conceived and has grown?

AA: Indic Keyboard was started as a personal project by Malayalam-language computing advocate and developer Jishnu Mohan in 2013, is later upscaled into a community project collecting Indian language layouts suitable for mobile devices, updated and maintained by the free and open source community.

RV: Jishnu, as the core developer on this project, can you tell us how you overcame major roadblocks while designing Indic Keyboard?

Jishnu Mohan (JM): Absence of fonts in Android operating system was the major roadblock in increasing the language coverage. Android 4.4 supported only few Indian scripts, but some vendors like Samsung included more Indian language scripts. So we decided to go with 16 language support in Indic Keyboard 1.0 version last year. Since Android 5.1 has increased script coverage, we were able to support more languages in this 2.0 release.

RV: What were the other major challenges you faced, Anivar?

AA: The initial challenges of bringing a mobile input layout were many; from building dictionaries to the user interface. Google's Android Open Source Project (AOS) was used as a base for building this app where the keyboards that were integrated came from various sources. Keyboard layouts are not copyrighted and this was very useful for us to use a popular layout like Tamil99 for Tamil or another popular layout like Lekhani that was developed by the Odia Wikimedia community.

Happy to see Script support for Odiya , Saurashtra , Meetri Mayek, Lepcha, Limbu, Ol chikki (Santhali), Sylheti Nagari In Android 5.1

— indicproject (@indicproject) March 15, 2015

RV: How was Indic Project started and what have been its major accomplishments, so far?

AA: During 2005-2008 major ground work was done for localization support in Indic languages and overall improvement of communication using Indian languages. By 2009 web based technology were became our focus which oriented towards building and improving mobile applications for more users reading and writing in their native Indian languages. The project upscaling and 1.0 release of project was part of with the SMC-ICFOSS collaboration as a part of Department of Telecommunications (DIT) Android R & D Project of the Government of India. The project also received another grant from ICFOSS via Government of Kerala's Malayalam Computing project.

RV: What can you tell us about your work in policy-level lobbying and negotiations?

AA: We have done some work in policy front and recently submitted a policy brief requesting the government to mandate the inclusion of at least one Indian language font and one keyboard layout of all 22 official languages recognized as per 8th schedule of the Indian constitution in all smart phones and tablets selling in India.

RV: How did you reach so many users? What are your future promotion plans?

AA: The most important reason why Indic Keyboard reached out to 200k users with over 100k downloads is because of it not bringing up new keyboard layouts where as almost all other mobile input apps have their own proprietary layouts that users take time to learn and use.

RV: What are the difficulties of reaching out to masses of people?

AA: Many of the layouts were already popular and it was an added benefit for the primarily targeting people who know about inputting in their languages. Partnerships with mobile manufacturers and integrators this year for adoption of these keyboards. So users can get Indian language experience via vendor firmware itself without any extra download. Indic Keyboard liberated Indian language input in mobile devices and we want to port the same experience to all emerging mobile platforms.

RV: Are there any final comments or bit of information you'd like to share?

AA: Continuing research and development in this domain including ability to download of dictionaries for user preferred languages, increasing coverage to all 22 official languages in India, developing an free software library for gesture typing and building support for predictive input will be our main focus in the future.

As a promoter and developer of free and open source language technology, SMC plans to focus more on cross-platform mobile input-library-building and policy-level adoption for language input and other language technology advancements in the near future. SMC says it's currently in talks with the Indian government about mandating native keyboards on smart phones.

The keyboard can be downloaded from the Google Play store at http://j.mp/indicmal and also from the software repository at Gitlab at https://gitlab.com/smc/indic-keyboard.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-newly-updated-indic-keyboard-app-now-supports-22-asian-languages